Taping, tennis and Tully's

Good morning everyone,If you find anyone who complains about the weather today, please slap them for me! It's great weather for late May. Today will see a high of 27C and sunny skies! Tomorrow and Thursday will be warmer-in fact, they're saying we may see the mercury hit 30C on Thursday and it'll continue to be nice all through the week. Until the weekend, when we might see some rain, but they said the same thing about this weekend too. Speaking of rain, apparently rainy season has already started in Okinawa. One weatherman was explaining that, due to El Nino, there will be a lot more rain than usual and it'll also fall later than usual. Of course, it depends on where you live in Japan, but here in Hiroshima, we will see the heavy rain during mid to late July.

So, after the weather suddenly turned nice yesterday, my friends and I decided to hit the court-tennis court, that is. We had a reservation at the one in Kannon, but apparently we got bumped by a club who was holding a tournament or something. Anyway, we called the one Motomachi, but it was totally booked until like 5pm. It crossed our minds to give Ryoko Tennis School a try, but the price was just too high-maybe it's my Canadian heritage, but there's no way I'm paying $20 to rent a tennis court for an hour. I can't understand why we can't use the courts at public schools after school and on weekends. We can in Canada. Our tax dollars pay for them after all...anyway...we decided to just go and hit the ball around near Ota River and I'm glad we did.

First of all, we were way worse than we thought we'd be! Ha ha! We were running all over the place chasing down bad shots-I suppose it was good exercise, but it would have been really embarrassing if we had been at a club. And secondly, we were way more out of shape than we figured. My wrist was killing me by the end of an hour! And my Achilles was too...

When the weatherman was calling for rain yesterday, I was secretly happy because my Achilles, which was getting better, still could have used another week of rest. However, it wasn't meant to be, so I taped it up so tight that my toes were turning blue and went out and played tennis on it for an hour or so. I couldn't go full out, but it wasn't bad. The most painful part was taking the tape off afterwards. Have you ever had waxing done? It felt like that! And looks like it too! There's a 2cm strip around my right ankle that has way less hair than the rest of my leg! Ha ha!

Finally, we decided to head to Tully's to chill out after the game. Even though it was Sunday, it wasn't that busy because we went so early in the morning-it was around 10:30 or so when we got there. And iced coffee never tasted so good! Ha ha!

I'm looking forward to getting out and practicing on a proper court once my Achilles is completely recovered-hopefully by next weekend!